Hippocrates meets Xanthippe

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Monthly Archives: October 2015

A reminder of our role as Physician Educators. So many people do not understand the complexity of the work of General Practitioners. Many may not realise that the word Doctor has derived from the Latin “to teach”. This is a big part of what we do and a reminder of the importance of our own GP health literacy and our own GP digital literacy in being able to access timely evidence based information quickly and appraise it well critically.
As the article suggests encouraging your patients health literacy is not necessarily a function of their education level, although clearly this can assist. Vaccination debates, sexuality, contraception, screening debates, mental health, diet and exercise have much mythology even amongst the non-medical but highly educated patient cohorts. Ideally we work with our patients in an increasingly educative partnership guiding them along the way to optimum health.
That folks is just part of our work. Its nebulous and time consuming but extremely important in this age of misinformation.
General Practice and Primary Care is a complex profession interfacing as it does with the coal face and the socio-cultural-technical contexts of our time.